The story of my struggles: the memoirs of Arminius Vambéry, Volume 1

by Ármin Vámbéry

After the conclusion of the Crimean War this Café Flamm had become the favourite haunt of disillusioned adventurers, officers out of employ, bankrupt merchants, despairing emigrants, political enthusiasts, and heroes of all trades and nationalities. To judge from the conversation of these almost always hungry gentlemen, the fate of Europe and of Turkey was to be decided in this dingy, smoky parlour; they played ball with Sovereigns and Ministers of State to their hearts' content; they all had their own plans and views for the amelioration of the world, and each of them secretly believed that it was merely a question of time for him to get to the head of affairs in Turkey. The modern Argonaut expedition of united Europe to the northern banks of the Euxine had created during and since the Crimean War quite a marvellous host of knights of the Golden Fleece, and had opened the romantic East to the romantic children of the West. The tailor's apprentice is in this "Foreign Legion" suddenly promoted to be a first lieutenant or captain; hotel waiters become secretaries and interpreters; journalists blossom forth as great strategists, financiers, and diplomatists; ensigns are for the nonce colonels and generals; and when, after the violent attack on the Malakoff, the angel of peace appeared on the banks of the Seine, vanished was the glitter of the golden existence in the Golden Horn; the heroes, one and all, subsided into their former insignificance, and met at the Café Flamm to sweeten the bitter bread of sad reality by the concoction of still more high-flown plans for the future. The various types I saw in this coffee-house and the hours spent there will ever remain fresh in my memory.

In this manner the first days of my sojourn in Pera passed away. I traversed in all directions both the European and the Turkish quarters of the town, and always liked to enter into conversation with the Turks lounging in the coffee-houses; I read aloud from the Turkish books I always carried about with me, and noticed that the Mohammedans, easily influenced and affable folks, were impressed by my knowledge of Turkish and Persian, and regarded me as a kind of prodigy who, having arrived in Stambul only a day or two ago, already spoke Turkish like an Effendi. On account of the great difference between the language of the educated classes and of the people, those who speak the former are always treated with a certain amount of respect, especially if they are unbelievers; and as at that time the sympathies of the Turks for the Hungarians had reached their height, the kindness of these good Osmanli seemed quite natural to me; and when in any of the coffee-houses I read aloud passages from "Ashik Garib" ("The Amorous Foreigner"), or from another popular poem, with the right accentuation and modulation, I generally reaped a rich harvest of bread, cheese, and coffee, sometimes even Kebab (roast beef) or Pilaf and Pastirma (dry, smoked meat). At night I availed myself of Mr. Püspöki's hospitality, and slept excellently on my miserable couch, in spite of the fiendish noise of the rats racing about in the room. Their presence was at first rather objectionable to me, as they gnawed my boots and my clothes, but afterwards, when the necessary precautions had been taken, I did not trouble any more about them. Favoured by fine weather, in the charm of novelty the first six weeks of my stay in Constantinople passed away pleasantly. I never knew in the morning where I should eat in the evening: the future did not trouble me in the least; and as I had now changed my hat for a fez, and looked shabby enough to pass for a wandering lecturer, I spent my days enjoying to the full my vagabond life.

The mixed nationalities that I came into contact with on the banks of the Bosporus, were exactly what I needed to complete my theoretical knowledge of their languages, and ear and memory stood each other in good stead. I soon acquired the correct accent and construction; and imitating the different languages as closely as I could in tone and sound, many took me for a native, and the jokes and jests caused by this muddle of languages gave me many a delicious moment. Unfortunately my happiness was somewhat marred by the sudden departure of Mr. Püspöki, who had found employment as cook on one of the steamers of the Messageries Impériales, for this made me lose my night quarters, and I had to hunt about for a long time, until at last the secretary of the Hungarian Association—Magyar Egylet—proposed that I should take up my quarters in the council-room of the Society, which was likely soon to be dissolved. In this large, empty hall I found an old sofa, on which I stretched myself, but the evenings were cool and I could not sleep. So I begged Mr. Frecskay, which was the secretary's name, to give me a wrap of some kind. The good-hearted man appeared presently with a torn tricolor in his hand, handed it to me with grave pathos, and said, "I have nothing but this precious memento of our glorious struggle. This flag has sent the fire of enthusiasm into the lines of our fighters for justice and freedom; cover yourself with it, it will warm you also." Of course I could not continue to sleep there, so I set off once more in search of a bed, and soon found help in the person of another compatriot, Major E. This man had unfortunately lost his watchdog, and as his wife would not be left alone in the lonely house near Hassköi, he invited me to take up my abode there while he was away on business in the provinces, and until he had procured another watchdog. So I was to occupy the vacant position of watchdog! It was not particularly inviting; but turned out rather better than I expected. Instead of a dog-kennel I had a comfortable room, and plenty of coffee and bread for breakfast. So I contented myself with the exchange, and continued my old Bohemian life.

The mornings were chiefly devoted to reading Turkish books, then I cleaned out the yard and fetched water from the well some little distance off, and towards evening I repaired to different coffee-houses to gain a piaster or two by reciting familiar love-poems. No sooner was I seated there on a high stool surrounded by Turks and Armenians, and had begun to recite in a nasal sing-song tone, when the conversation gradually dropped, and the rattling of the nargiles began to subside. They listened to the love-sick lamentations of Wamik and Esra, of Khossru and Shirin, where the sad fate of the lovers is recounted. My readings and recitations were generally attended by the manifestations of violent emotion or admiration on the part of my audience. In my subsequent travels in Persia I have often experienced the same thing; and even now, when I think of those times, the spell of the scene comes over me again, and I revel in the memory of those early days, when I could gain the ear of those regular Orientals and keep the crowds spellbound. Truly speech, the spoken word, is a mighty instrument! By it mountains are levelled and hearts hard as rock are softened. Differences of faith and nationality vanish before it; and as I had the good fortune to experience all this at the very outset of my adventurous career in Asia, many dark outlines of the far-off future were smoothed away.

Thus the days passed swiftly until the approach of autumn, when I began to realise the seriousness of my condition, and once more I made up my mind to try to get lessons or a permanent appointment as private tutor, in order to make a decent living. In the East bombastic speeches and high-flown announcements are not at all a rarity; nevertheless the advertisement which I had fixed up in all the booksellers' shops in Pera, and in which I offered myself as teacher of a whole string of Western and Eastern languages, attracted much attention. Bizarre, absurd, and fantastic as my advertisement was, it did not fail in its object, for before long I was summoned by a Turk in Scutari, and a Mr. von Hübsch, General-Consul of Denmark. The former had just come in for a large sum of money, and in order to do justice to his position of modern dandy wanted to be able to talk a little French. He wished to take French lessons from me, while the latter, an Easterling by birth, wanted to learn Danish, not so much for conversation, he thought, but rather to be able to read the Danish Court circular and newspapers. Here was a singular and rather perplexing demand upon my Scandinavian studies; in my wildest dreams it had never entered my brain that I might be called upon to teach a representative of Denmark the language of that country! And yet such was the case. For eighteen months Mr. v. Hübsch continued my pupil, and when, at the end of that time, we had finished Andersen's novel Kun [=a] Spilleman ("Only a Fiddler"), and he could read the Berlinske Tidninger, I came to the conclusion that there is nothing impossible in this world, and that an adventurous career certainly brings the oddest experiences. I did not get on so well with my Turkish scholar. As a man of fashion his object was merely to have a French maître coming to the house, but he was lazy and frivolous, and all the learning that was done was on my side; for in his house at Chamlidjia, on the hill above Scutari, he always entertained a company of Effendis and Porte officials in the evenings, with whom I conversed for hours, and made rapid progress both in Turkish society manners and customs, and in the elegancies of the Osmanli speech. The distance between the landing-stage at Scutari and Chamlidjia was a weary journey to accomplish every day on foot, but it was a gradus ad Parnassum, and after being in office for three months I could act the Effendi not only in outward appearance, manners, and gesticulations, but I could hold a conversation in Turkish with all the necessary elegance, and was well on the way to becoming a perfect Effendi.

The Turks of the upper classes are very pleasant people, especially when one humours their peculiarities, and takes the trouble to learn their language, one of the most difficult in the world. No wonder, therefore, that my circle of acquaintances perceptibly increased, and that I had constantly fresh applications and fresh invitations as teacher of languages. Thus far I had made Pera my headquarters, but when, through the intervention of my countryman, Ismail Pasha (General Kmetty), I was offered the position of private tutor in the Konak of the Hussain Daim Pasha, in the town-quarter of Kabatash, I accepted at once, adjourned to the Turkish quarter, and henceforth became a regular Turk. Only the name was wanting now, and this was given me by my principal, a worthy Cherkess, who had been educated at the court of Sultan Mahmud; he ordered his household henceforth to address me as Reshid, i.e., the valiant, the honest one; and on the strength of my linguistic skill to give me the title of Effendi. So Reshid Effendi was my official name, but neither the Pasha nor myself had ever thought of a regular Islamising. The former, a Mohammedan of the purest water, who afterwards became involved in an anti-reform conspiracy, thought no doubt that my conversion would follow as a matter of course, and that, when fully convinced of the material advantages to be derived from joining the ruling class altogether, I should give up all idea of returning to the West. As for myself, the very idea of conversion was far from me. I had long been a confirmed freethinker, and Islam seemed to open a religious world which, because of its sound foundation and rational dogmas, was all the more dangerous to the free soaring upward of the spirit; but with my declared animosity against positive religions in general, it was altogether beyond me to embrace it. At the same time I must admit that the forbearance of the upper classes in the Turkish metropolis was most praiseworthy; for most of them saw perfectly well through the hypocritical nature not only of my Moslemism but of that of other European renegades, and did not pin the slightest faith to the conversion of Europeans; they never in any way, however, disapproved of this incognito, or resented the mere external acknowledgment of the newly adopted faith. In this the better classes of Turkey have always advantageously distinguished themselves from the soi-disant cultured classes of European society; for while these latter high-born gentlemen, brought up in the trammels of prejudice, short-sightedness, and hypocrisy, presuppose in their converts the same lack of inner persuasion, and consider conversion to their views quite a possible thing, the cultured Turk, be he ever so religious, recognises in Islam a world of thought, born and bred in the blood, dependent upon education and mental development, and absolutely impossible of adoption by a man of Western training. They called me Reshid Effendi, they permitted me to be present at and to join in their religious ceremonies, they discussed in my presence frankly and unreservedly the most abstruse religious questions, they even brought me in contact with the friars, and laughed when I joined in the recitation of hymns, or took part in their disputes; but the question whether I really intended to become a Mohammedan, to marry, and to live the life of a regular Moslem, nobody ever thought of asking; that question has been put to me only by the uneducated.

In this manner I was enabled to move in Turkish society as Reshid Effendi without in any way binding myself. The more I became familiar with their social customs, and steeped in the Oriental ways of living and thinking, the larger grew my circle of acquaintances, and the more unreservedly all doors were opened to me, not merely of lower officials but of the higher and even the very highest dignitaries. Turkey knows no aristocracy of birth; the man of obscure origin can suddenly become Marshal and Grand-Vizier; and since most of them, as self-made men, have no genealogical scruples, so also in the foreigner they do not so much consider his antecedents as his personal capabilities; and as my fame as professor of the Turkish language spread, I found the doors of the highest society open to me, and in a year's time, I was, with the exception of Murad Effendi (Werner), who lived in the house of Kibrisli Pasha, the only European who, without formally going over to Islam, had become an Effendi and a protégé of the Porte circle. Easy as this transformation had been, because of the tolerance of the better classes of Stambul, so much the greater had been the sacrifices which the lower classes demanded from me. Servants play an important part in Turkish households; they are looked upon as members of the family, and in the patriarchal organisation of the house they have a considerable influence upon the Effendi and Pasha, and especially upon the children. These servants, transported from the interior of European and Asiatic Turkey to the banks of the Bosporus, are generally in the very lowest stage of education; they are extremely fanatical and suspicious as regards Europeans, and the higher I rose in the favour of the master of the house the higher rose their jealousy and animosity. They could not understand that, notwithstanding my literary and religious knowledge, I did not become a pious Moslem, and why the Pasha, Bey, or Effendi should show me, the disguised Giaour, so much attention. In spite of all that both religion and national custom prescribe as to the kind treatment of guests, for the Koran says, "Ekremu ed dhaifun ve lau kana kafirun," i.e., "Honour the guest, even if he be an unbeliever," I had much unkindness to bear, and had to put up with many a humiliation. What amused me most was the conduct of the older house-servants; they even played the Mentor towards the governor, his wife, and his children, and often instructed me in rules of etiquette and general views of life. In the eyes of these people infidel Europe was a barbarian wilderness, rejecting the civilising influences of Islam, and it was an act of condescension on the part of the old-stock Turk, brought up within the small Stambul circle, to put me right, and to instruct me in the correct way of sitting, walking, eating, talking, and general comportment. Others, again, were malevolent and fanatical, made me the butt of their ill-chosen jokes, worried me, and once it even happened that a scoundrel, who had risen to be the tyrant of the house, threw his boot at my head because I had not polished it enough to his liking. I had to take all this into the bargain; it was a new school—the school of Oriental life—which I had to pass through, and the fee had to be paid.

After the servants it was the harem, i.e., the Turkish female world, which caused me a good deal of trouble. Turkish women, the fair sex in general, are distinctly conservative, and they could not understand how the Pasha or Effendi could tolerate the presence of a Giaour in the Selamlik, i.e., in close proximity to the harem, and above all, how he could have come upon the idea of entrusting the education of his children to an infidel. Even now Turkish ladies are much more fanatical than the men; but at that time, the beginning of the reform period, they evinced an ungovernable hatred and aversion against everything Christian. They showed me their dislike in all sorts of teasing ways. Communication between the harem and the outer world is carried on by means of the Dolab, a round, revolving sort of cupboard. Everything intended for the Selamlik is placed in this Dolab, and when the women want to speak with any one outside they do so through the Dolab. When I heard the sound of a woman's voice, and shouted the customary "Buyurun" ("At your service") into the Dolab, I either received no answer at all or else some rude rejoinder; and it was not till later, when I had trained myself to make exquisitely polite speeches and poetic compliments, that they vouchsafed to give me a short answer. After months of effort I succeeded at last in breaking the ice. My youthful fire could not fail to take effect, and the ladies, most of them very beautiful Circassians, who were much neglected by the old invalid master of the house, gradually began to praise my willingness to oblige them and my linguistic proficiency, and proofs of their favour were also forthcoming. In six months' time the Böyük Hanim (chief wife) entrusted me with the charge of one of the Odalisks, long past the spring of life, who suffered from severe toothache, and had to be taken to a dentist at Pera. The long and difficult road up the steep incline to Pera necessitated a rest midway, and with the afflicted lady I stopped at the house of a Hungarian countryman of mine. The kind hospitality she met with seemed to have pleased the Turkish woman extremely, for soon afterwards more ladies of the harem, some of them quite young, were suddenly seized with toothache, and I had to take them in turns to Pera for dental operations. My intercourse with the inmates of the harem was very strained; it was so difficult to keep to the strict rules of etiquette. I could not accustom myself to cast down my eyes when in the presence of a lady, as Turkish custom demands. It is no small matter at twenty-four to tear one's gaze away from the fiery orbs of a beautiful Circassian. There were other difficulties which it cost me much trouble to overcome.

But, true to my principle to persevere and to bear all things, and hardened by early sufferings, I found strength to pursue the end I had in view. Rising, step by step, I first came into the house of the Chief Chancellor of the Imperial Divan, Afif Bey, whose son-in-law, Kiamil Bey, I taught for about twelve months, and where I had daily intercourse with the élite of Porte society. Our house, opposite the mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud II., not far from the High Porte, was the rendezvous of men of wit and genius, celebrated authors, and high society generally. Here I made the acquaintance of Midhat Pasha, afterwards celebrated in Europe as the father of the Turkish constitution. He was then Midhat Effendi, and occupied the position of secretary to my Pasha. Midhat was a lively young man of a restless and fanciful turn of mind; he was studying French at that time, and as he had not the patience, while reading, to look up words in the dictionary, he began to read with me for a few hours every day, in return for which he helped me to decipher difficult Turkish texts, as, for instance, in the historical works of Saaddesdin of Kemalpashazade, or he corrected my compositions and introduced me into the Medrissa (college) for Osmanlis, where I was allowed to attend the lectures of celebrated exegetists, grammarians, and lawyers of the time, in company with the Softas (students of divinity). Here, crouching before the Rahle (Koran-desk) at the feet of the thickly turbaned Khodjas (teachers), I was introduced into the practical knowledge of Islam, and the instruction which my fellow-students accepted with religious enthusiasm was to me all the more interesting as, rising higher and higher in the estimation of the Turks in general, I gained possession of the talisman which has been my guide in all my subsequent journeys and wanderings. Amongst the many Europeans who have formally gone over to Islam, I was the first to be educated at a Medresse (university), and the study seemed the easier to me as the ruling spirit here strongly reminded me of the Orthodox Jewish schools. Here, as there, discussions and disputations are carried on with great religious zeal; they go carefully into the minutest details of ritualistic ordinances, they criticise and speak for and against; and whoever can hold out longest with his arguments is reckoned to be the best scholar. As Muhtedi, i.e., One brought to the truth, or properly, converted, they were particularly obliging to me, and all my remarks were applauded.